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Valerie Hague

Implementation project manager | SAS | Class of 2004

An ode to Murphy’s Pub, by 2000s regular and future Air Force intelligence officer Valerie Hague (BA '04, political science/government):

“The noise hit you first, voices and clinking glass. Or was it the blend of burgers, beer and melted cheese that you first walked into?

“Whatever it was, walking through the wooden front door of Murphy’s Irish Pub and up the gentle slope of the tiled floor was always the beginning of an event with my friends, my fellow cadets from the Air Force ROTC Detachment 190.

“We invaded Murphy’s at least twice a week — once every Wednesday without fail at noon and again on Thursday nights for our social after the weekly Lead Lab. Wednesdays especially were sacrosanct: We would schedule our semester around ensuring 12-1 was always free for us to meet up for our Mug Club.”

(Hague still has her shirt, she’s proud to report).

“I feel some of my 1 p.m. professors got wise as the semester went on and would purposefully call on me when I was sleepily digesting my Irish nachos and beer. The friendships forged over commemorative glasses and fried foods have sustained me for the past 17 years and counting, and I know we all share the same memories of greeting each other, sliding into the wooden booth, and catching up.

“I even dragged my husband there eight years after graduation — Murphy’s is a little bigger, a little older, and the crowd a bit younger than I remember, but my beloved Irish nachos were still on the menu and the beer was still cold.”